Post by Senbecc on Apr 30, 2006 10:40:26 GMT -5
Faerie tales and Folklore of the Scottish Highlands
by Muireall Donald
Failte! Thank you for coming here tonight. Do you know what that means? Failte is the Gaelic word for "welcome". The next time you hear someone say, "Welcome", perhaps you’ll remember that this way of greeting originated on the Isle of Mull, where the words "Well come!" were the traditional way of meeting a stranger.
Tonight we’re going to discuss some of the fairy tales and folklore of the Scottish Highlands. I can tell by your excitement that every one of you believes in fairies. I do too.
It has not been so very long ago, in the timeline of the world, that the people of Scotland lived almost entirely surrounded by the richness of their mythic heritage. Everything they did was bounded by their belief in the powers of good and evil. Every hill had a name; every loch, its guardian spirit. Even the wells from which our forebears drew their water were inhabited by gods and goddesses, and each deity had its own area of expertise such as healing or fertility.
In some of the more remote areas of the Highlands, such as the Hebridean Isles, it is still possible to encounter a town tale-teller who can recite the stories of heroes and adventure, of white witches and black, and of the bean-sidhes (banshees) who are harbingers of death.
We have reason to be grateful the isolation of the Isles, for it has a great deal to do with the preservation of the folk tales we do have. As technology and society advanced on Scotland, along with a dark period of British oppression, many of the old ballads and stories were lost from memory. Within the past two hundred years, however, both amateur and professional researchers have begun to research the old ways.
Two of the most noted collectors of Scottish folklore are Anne Ross and John Francis Campbell. Campbell in particular saw the need for gathering the material and carrying it out of the Highlands so that those Scots who had lost touch with beliefs such as fairy eggs and corn dollies might participate in a collective rebirth of interest in their traditions.
What Campbell found was that even though the country of Scotland is made up of areas that unfolded in totally different ways from each other, with different religions and language roots, there is a common area where folk lore and legends begin to blur and blend into each other.
Highlanders have always been known for their gift of "Second Sight". Although the futures revealed by seers with the Sight were for the most part tragic and unpleasant, it has continued to be a much sought after and revered gift. Seers were considered important members of society. Up until the latter half of the twentieth century, if a seer told someone she had been dreaming about them, the person concerned usually had no desire to know the nature of the dream, for it frequently fortold grief.
The Sight tends to come upon people without warning: a woman might be in the middle of washing clothes or stirring a stew pot, or spinning yarn. It is not necessarily an inherited trait and may manifest at any point of life -- childhood, middle age, or old age. Mostly Seers are known to prophecy death, which is understandable when one remembers the Celtic fascination with the worship of graves and ancestors. It is not difficult to grasp, then, why Seers are usually melancholy people who tend to hold themselves apart from society.
But there are also lucky signs that may be seen by Seers. The sight of a brown-haired man is considered to be a good omen, if the man is coming towards or looking at the Seer, it is an excellent sign. If the man is going away from the Seer, it is an extremely unfortunate omen. The sight of a red-haired woman is always unlucky and so is left-handedness. A Seer who is performing a divination should immediately make the sign of the Cross he sees a woman with red hair. Dark red hair is worst of all. This is probably an old memory of the time when Viking marauders invaded Scotland. Just why women are targeted is a mystery, however.
Things to do and not to do encompassed a large sphere of Highland life. Everything was founded on ancient tradition. Even today this applies to some extent, especially to things like good manners and hospitality. Travelers continue to be surprised at the spontaneous generosity of the Highlanders, and the habit of leaving a portion of food for "the man on the hill" (the chance guest), is well known.
Another ancient custom, in operation up until the last hundred years or so, was that when a group of men went into a house to do business or to drink, the door of the house was left open and a rod was put across it. This was understood to mean that no person without rank could enter the house.
The use of charms is another old tradition. They were not only used for protection of livestock, the house and its inhabitants, but against specific dangers such as drowning or death in battle. Often the charm was one gotten from a member of the fairy race, and it was usually recited three times, in Gaelic.
To me the fairies are the most fascinating of all Highland lore. They include not only the spirits who inhabit the wild places, but black dogs, aggressive goats, and dangerous bulls. The fairies themselves are said to dislike the word. They prefer to be referred to as the fair folk, the good neighbors and in the Highlands, the ‘Sith’ or the Good Folk.
The word ‘fairy’ is a modern one, not in usage prior to the middle ages. We tend to think of medieval times as being long ago, but just for a moment, let’s stop and consider that the fifteenth century, for example, was only four hundred years ago. Not very far away from today after all, in the timeline of world history. And people haven’t really changed all that much in four hundred years: we still want to believe in magic and honor and romantic love and spiritual quests and happily ever after.
The word ‘Faerie’ (spell it aloud both ways: faery and faerie) originally meant a state of enchantment. Over time, the word came to be used to describe the creatures who caused enchantment.
Folklorists and collectors of fairy tales love to dispute which of the two came first. Academic folklorists use the stories to trace the spread of tradition and societal structure. But most people who collect fairy tales are literature buffs who enjoy the imaginative tales. The definition of ‘true’ fairy beliefs, is usually accepted to mean the lore actually believed by people in an area or culture over a period of time. Examples of this lore are things like: fairies wear green, they dislike untidy and mercenary people, they like to play tricks on humans, they steal human babies, they have two "moving days" a year, and a human stumbling into Fairyland must never eat or drink anything that is offered to him there.
Does the folklorist and collector of fairy stories need to believe in fairies? I would like to believe such a person would be of a scientific yet cautiously open mind. Some of the stories have the ring of truth, but then people often see what they expect to see.
And just what might one expect to see who went looking for the fair folk?
Most fairies look like miniature humans, although there are some who can appear as small animals.
J.F. Campbell described the queen of the fairies as beautiful and clothed in white linens and in white and brown clothes. Another fairy queen described by him is more exotic. She was dressed in a rich green gown with gold embroidery, and she wore a small coronet of pearls on her head.
Green is widely acknowledged to be the fairy color, and humans who wear it risk raising the anger of the fairies. Many of the gentlemen fairies wear red caps or red feathers in their caps. Fairies on the Isle of Man were described by a scholar named Jenkinson as being young girls with fish-like hands and blue dresses. The Gunna, a Highland fairy boy who was banished from the fairy court, wore fox skins. The Ghillie Dhu dressed in leaves and green moss. The Brown Man of the Muirs wore bracken. Not much like the Disney version of fairies!
But from medieval times onward, fairies seem to have developed a taste for beautiful clothing. Eye witness accounts from this time period describe fairies wearing clothes made of gossamer and silk and gold and silver colors. Most fairies however, seem to wear clothes similar to our own. So when you are out doing your fairy hunting, look for tiny people with a penchant for color.
And what sort of etiquette is advised if you do meet with a fairy? The most important tip I can give you is: be polite! Answer any question they might pose truthfully. They have been known to show considerable kindness to their human friends, usually because of the good manners shown by the mortals. And fairies are also known to repay acts of kindness with routine gifts of good luck or by a single reciprocal act of prosperity. But keep in mind that there are some fairies who do not like to be thanked.
The fair folk have a rigid code of behavior and morals of their own and they are quite strict in enforcing these things. They guard their privacy and will punish anyone who violates this. They hate spies and sometimes take away the vision in one of the mortal’s eyes. Other times, spies were punished with sickness or their crops were ruined. Rudeness and selfishness are very unpopular with the fair folk.
Perhaps the best known Highland fairy is the banshee. This word is a Gaelic one which means ‘fairy woman’. She is usually seen beside a burn or river washing the bloodstained clothes of those about to die. She is an omen of evil but if anyone who sees her before she sees him gets between her and the water, she may grant him three wishes. She will answer three questions but she asks three questions that must be answered truly. It is said that the Banshee are the ghosts of women who have died in childbirth and must perform their washing task until the natural destined time of their death comes. But the banshees are known for other things besides washing death shrouds.
In a fairy tale called The Banshee and the Kettle, the wraith came every night to the house of a Highland woman who respected the fairies. Each night, the banshee would take away the kettle with its remnant of soup, which hung over the hearth. The good wife did not begrudge the food to the fairies, however she always repeated a charm over the kettle when her family was through eating. The next morning, the kettle would be hanging in its customary place, full of magical meat scraps for the next meal. The farmer husband of the good wife enjoyed this bounty, for it meant his own cattle could grow fat for market day. One day the good wife had to journey to the town. She left instructions for her husband to stir the pot, recite the charm, and to respectfully allow the banshee entrance to the house.
Unlike my husband, this man was not much interested in kitchen affairs. When the banshee came screeching at the door, the farmer ran screaming out the window, forgetting rhyme and reason in his haste to get away from the death head. Offended at his lack of respect, the banshee took the kettle anyway, muttering under her breath at the ill reception he had given her. When his wife returned home, she found her hearth bare and her soup spilled over the stones. She went straightaway to the fairy brogh (hill) nearby and bending over to peer inside the entrance, she found her kettle. She picked it up and started home. But two large black dogs followed her, snapping and growling at her heels. One by one, the good wife took the meat scraps from out the kettle and threw them to the fairy dogs. By the time she returned home, the kettle was empty. Never again did the banshee return and from that day on, the inhospitable farmer was forced to slaughter his own cattle to make soup meat.
ANOTHER type of Scottish faery is the kelpie. He can assume human form or the form of a young horse. He played the trick of luring travellers to a deep pool, where he struck the water with a thunderous crash and disappeared in a flash of light. I wrote a faery story about a kelpie for my book, Glencoe, A Romance of Scotland. In the scene, the heroine is telling the tale to two small girls. The kelpie in the story fell in love with a mortal woman and lured her from her lover to an enchanted loch. The situation is a dangerous one, and the message in the story is that the children should never go near the loch alone. Many faery stories illustrate points like this, much in the way that parables have always served to explain virtues and ideals. Faery tales however, are usually devoted to practical issues of everyday life.
IN THE BOOK I’M WRITING NOW, another kind of faery has the main role. They are called the ‘selkie folk’ because it is believed that their natural form is human, that they live in an underwater world or on lonely skerries and put on seal-skins and the appearance of seals to enable them to pass through the water from one region of air to another. In their human form, the male and female selkies are more beautiful than ordinary mortals, though they are uncouth and shapeless as seals. Their beauty shows only in their large, translucent eyes, but it is great enough to ensnare and enspell any mortal who looks at them. A mortal who can steal one of the seal-skins can capture a selkie maiden and take her as his wife. But if she finds the skin again, she will leave him and any children of the union without a backward glance. And supposedly, the male selkies are quite amorous toward human women and quite talented in their exploits!
To understand the spirit of the Scots, one must understand their folklore. They are proud of their heritage and tradition. They are also proud of their strength that has endured the turbulent history of their land. Harsh of climate, buffeted by sea and storm, stony and mountainous, Scotland is a merciless land. Her history has been one of battle against adversity; from invasions by Norsemen in the eighth through the twelfth centuries, to suppression by the English and the ban on speaking the Gaelic and wearing the kilt, right up to the recent nationalist movement of the twentieth century.
The Scots have another tradition: their love of liberty and their dignity. The richness of surviving Scottish Highland folklore and legend is due partly to the fact that it was handed down in voice, in ballads and tales which were highly developed in Celtic societies. It is also a revelation of the Gaels themselves, their spiritual connection with nature and their passion for their land. The tales provided escape and entertainment for people who had to struggle every day just to survive. But even in the face of this daily struggle, the Celts always had a divine gift for great joy.
Luckily, many of the old stories and songs have been collected by scholars who approached their work with reverence and passion. There is still a large body of tradition to be heard and collected while there are enough older people left who recall it.
Scottish folklore is still very much alive, if we have the eyes and ears and heart to recognize it.
www.laughingowl.com/Muriel/ScottishFolklore.htm
by Muireall Donald
Failte! Thank you for coming here tonight. Do you know what that means? Failte is the Gaelic word for "welcome". The next time you hear someone say, "Welcome", perhaps you’ll remember that this way of greeting originated on the Isle of Mull, where the words "Well come!" were the traditional way of meeting a stranger.
Tonight we’re going to discuss some of the fairy tales and folklore of the Scottish Highlands. I can tell by your excitement that every one of you believes in fairies. I do too.
It has not been so very long ago, in the timeline of the world, that the people of Scotland lived almost entirely surrounded by the richness of their mythic heritage. Everything they did was bounded by their belief in the powers of good and evil. Every hill had a name; every loch, its guardian spirit. Even the wells from which our forebears drew their water were inhabited by gods and goddesses, and each deity had its own area of expertise such as healing or fertility.
In some of the more remote areas of the Highlands, such as the Hebridean Isles, it is still possible to encounter a town tale-teller who can recite the stories of heroes and adventure, of white witches and black, and of the bean-sidhes (banshees) who are harbingers of death.
We have reason to be grateful the isolation of the Isles, for it has a great deal to do with the preservation of the folk tales we do have. As technology and society advanced on Scotland, along with a dark period of British oppression, many of the old ballads and stories were lost from memory. Within the past two hundred years, however, both amateur and professional researchers have begun to research the old ways.
Two of the most noted collectors of Scottish folklore are Anne Ross and John Francis Campbell. Campbell in particular saw the need for gathering the material and carrying it out of the Highlands so that those Scots who had lost touch with beliefs such as fairy eggs and corn dollies might participate in a collective rebirth of interest in their traditions.
What Campbell found was that even though the country of Scotland is made up of areas that unfolded in totally different ways from each other, with different religions and language roots, there is a common area where folk lore and legends begin to blur and blend into each other.
Highlanders have always been known for their gift of "Second Sight". Although the futures revealed by seers with the Sight were for the most part tragic and unpleasant, it has continued to be a much sought after and revered gift. Seers were considered important members of society. Up until the latter half of the twentieth century, if a seer told someone she had been dreaming about them, the person concerned usually had no desire to know the nature of the dream, for it frequently fortold grief.
The Sight tends to come upon people without warning: a woman might be in the middle of washing clothes or stirring a stew pot, or spinning yarn. It is not necessarily an inherited trait and may manifest at any point of life -- childhood, middle age, or old age. Mostly Seers are known to prophecy death, which is understandable when one remembers the Celtic fascination with the worship of graves and ancestors. It is not difficult to grasp, then, why Seers are usually melancholy people who tend to hold themselves apart from society.
But there are also lucky signs that may be seen by Seers. The sight of a brown-haired man is considered to be a good omen, if the man is coming towards or looking at the Seer, it is an excellent sign. If the man is going away from the Seer, it is an extremely unfortunate omen. The sight of a red-haired woman is always unlucky and so is left-handedness. A Seer who is performing a divination should immediately make the sign of the Cross he sees a woman with red hair. Dark red hair is worst of all. This is probably an old memory of the time when Viking marauders invaded Scotland. Just why women are targeted is a mystery, however.
Things to do and not to do encompassed a large sphere of Highland life. Everything was founded on ancient tradition. Even today this applies to some extent, especially to things like good manners and hospitality. Travelers continue to be surprised at the spontaneous generosity of the Highlanders, and the habit of leaving a portion of food for "the man on the hill" (the chance guest), is well known.
Another ancient custom, in operation up until the last hundred years or so, was that when a group of men went into a house to do business or to drink, the door of the house was left open and a rod was put across it. This was understood to mean that no person without rank could enter the house.
The use of charms is another old tradition. They were not only used for protection of livestock, the house and its inhabitants, but against specific dangers such as drowning or death in battle. Often the charm was one gotten from a member of the fairy race, and it was usually recited three times, in Gaelic.
To me the fairies are the most fascinating of all Highland lore. They include not only the spirits who inhabit the wild places, but black dogs, aggressive goats, and dangerous bulls. The fairies themselves are said to dislike the word. They prefer to be referred to as the fair folk, the good neighbors and in the Highlands, the ‘Sith’ or the Good Folk.
The word ‘fairy’ is a modern one, not in usage prior to the middle ages. We tend to think of medieval times as being long ago, but just for a moment, let’s stop and consider that the fifteenth century, for example, was only four hundred years ago. Not very far away from today after all, in the timeline of world history. And people haven’t really changed all that much in four hundred years: we still want to believe in magic and honor and romantic love and spiritual quests and happily ever after.
The word ‘Faerie’ (spell it aloud both ways: faery and faerie) originally meant a state of enchantment. Over time, the word came to be used to describe the creatures who caused enchantment.
Folklorists and collectors of fairy tales love to dispute which of the two came first. Academic folklorists use the stories to trace the spread of tradition and societal structure. But most people who collect fairy tales are literature buffs who enjoy the imaginative tales. The definition of ‘true’ fairy beliefs, is usually accepted to mean the lore actually believed by people in an area or culture over a period of time. Examples of this lore are things like: fairies wear green, they dislike untidy and mercenary people, they like to play tricks on humans, they steal human babies, they have two "moving days" a year, and a human stumbling into Fairyland must never eat or drink anything that is offered to him there.
Does the folklorist and collector of fairy stories need to believe in fairies? I would like to believe such a person would be of a scientific yet cautiously open mind. Some of the stories have the ring of truth, but then people often see what they expect to see.
And just what might one expect to see who went looking for the fair folk?
Most fairies look like miniature humans, although there are some who can appear as small animals.
J.F. Campbell described the queen of the fairies as beautiful and clothed in white linens and in white and brown clothes. Another fairy queen described by him is more exotic. She was dressed in a rich green gown with gold embroidery, and she wore a small coronet of pearls on her head.
Green is widely acknowledged to be the fairy color, and humans who wear it risk raising the anger of the fairies. Many of the gentlemen fairies wear red caps or red feathers in their caps. Fairies on the Isle of Man were described by a scholar named Jenkinson as being young girls with fish-like hands and blue dresses. The Gunna, a Highland fairy boy who was banished from the fairy court, wore fox skins. The Ghillie Dhu dressed in leaves and green moss. The Brown Man of the Muirs wore bracken. Not much like the Disney version of fairies!
But from medieval times onward, fairies seem to have developed a taste for beautiful clothing. Eye witness accounts from this time period describe fairies wearing clothes made of gossamer and silk and gold and silver colors. Most fairies however, seem to wear clothes similar to our own. So when you are out doing your fairy hunting, look for tiny people with a penchant for color.
And what sort of etiquette is advised if you do meet with a fairy? The most important tip I can give you is: be polite! Answer any question they might pose truthfully. They have been known to show considerable kindness to their human friends, usually because of the good manners shown by the mortals. And fairies are also known to repay acts of kindness with routine gifts of good luck or by a single reciprocal act of prosperity. But keep in mind that there are some fairies who do not like to be thanked.
The fair folk have a rigid code of behavior and morals of their own and they are quite strict in enforcing these things. They guard their privacy and will punish anyone who violates this. They hate spies and sometimes take away the vision in one of the mortal’s eyes. Other times, spies were punished with sickness or their crops were ruined. Rudeness and selfishness are very unpopular with the fair folk.
Perhaps the best known Highland fairy is the banshee. This word is a Gaelic one which means ‘fairy woman’. She is usually seen beside a burn or river washing the bloodstained clothes of those about to die. She is an omen of evil but if anyone who sees her before she sees him gets between her and the water, she may grant him three wishes. She will answer three questions but she asks three questions that must be answered truly. It is said that the Banshee are the ghosts of women who have died in childbirth and must perform their washing task until the natural destined time of their death comes. But the banshees are known for other things besides washing death shrouds.
In a fairy tale called The Banshee and the Kettle, the wraith came every night to the house of a Highland woman who respected the fairies. Each night, the banshee would take away the kettle with its remnant of soup, which hung over the hearth. The good wife did not begrudge the food to the fairies, however she always repeated a charm over the kettle when her family was through eating. The next morning, the kettle would be hanging in its customary place, full of magical meat scraps for the next meal. The farmer husband of the good wife enjoyed this bounty, for it meant his own cattle could grow fat for market day. One day the good wife had to journey to the town. She left instructions for her husband to stir the pot, recite the charm, and to respectfully allow the banshee entrance to the house.
Unlike my husband, this man was not much interested in kitchen affairs. When the banshee came screeching at the door, the farmer ran screaming out the window, forgetting rhyme and reason in his haste to get away from the death head. Offended at his lack of respect, the banshee took the kettle anyway, muttering under her breath at the ill reception he had given her. When his wife returned home, she found her hearth bare and her soup spilled over the stones. She went straightaway to the fairy brogh (hill) nearby and bending over to peer inside the entrance, she found her kettle. She picked it up and started home. But two large black dogs followed her, snapping and growling at her heels. One by one, the good wife took the meat scraps from out the kettle and threw them to the fairy dogs. By the time she returned home, the kettle was empty. Never again did the banshee return and from that day on, the inhospitable farmer was forced to slaughter his own cattle to make soup meat.
ANOTHER type of Scottish faery is the kelpie. He can assume human form or the form of a young horse. He played the trick of luring travellers to a deep pool, where he struck the water with a thunderous crash and disappeared in a flash of light. I wrote a faery story about a kelpie for my book, Glencoe, A Romance of Scotland. In the scene, the heroine is telling the tale to two small girls. The kelpie in the story fell in love with a mortal woman and lured her from her lover to an enchanted loch. The situation is a dangerous one, and the message in the story is that the children should never go near the loch alone. Many faery stories illustrate points like this, much in the way that parables have always served to explain virtues and ideals. Faery tales however, are usually devoted to practical issues of everyday life.
IN THE BOOK I’M WRITING NOW, another kind of faery has the main role. They are called the ‘selkie folk’ because it is believed that their natural form is human, that they live in an underwater world or on lonely skerries and put on seal-skins and the appearance of seals to enable them to pass through the water from one region of air to another. In their human form, the male and female selkies are more beautiful than ordinary mortals, though they are uncouth and shapeless as seals. Their beauty shows only in their large, translucent eyes, but it is great enough to ensnare and enspell any mortal who looks at them. A mortal who can steal one of the seal-skins can capture a selkie maiden and take her as his wife. But if she finds the skin again, she will leave him and any children of the union without a backward glance. And supposedly, the male selkies are quite amorous toward human women and quite talented in their exploits!
To understand the spirit of the Scots, one must understand their folklore. They are proud of their heritage and tradition. They are also proud of their strength that has endured the turbulent history of their land. Harsh of climate, buffeted by sea and storm, stony and mountainous, Scotland is a merciless land. Her history has been one of battle against adversity; from invasions by Norsemen in the eighth through the twelfth centuries, to suppression by the English and the ban on speaking the Gaelic and wearing the kilt, right up to the recent nationalist movement of the twentieth century.
The Scots have another tradition: their love of liberty and their dignity. The richness of surviving Scottish Highland folklore and legend is due partly to the fact that it was handed down in voice, in ballads and tales which were highly developed in Celtic societies. It is also a revelation of the Gaels themselves, their spiritual connection with nature and their passion for their land. The tales provided escape and entertainment for people who had to struggle every day just to survive. But even in the face of this daily struggle, the Celts always had a divine gift for great joy.
Luckily, many of the old stories and songs have been collected by scholars who approached their work with reverence and passion. There is still a large body of tradition to be heard and collected while there are enough older people left who recall it.
Scottish folklore is still very much alive, if we have the eyes and ears and heart to recognize it.
www.laughingowl.com/Muriel/ScottishFolklore.htm